


Silence

by Writing-Classic-Rock (writingfanfic)



Category: The Who
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 09:44:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10241843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingfanfic/pseuds/Writing-Classic-Rock
Summary: For the prompt: 'Moonwistle (Keef Moon, Jawn Emtwistle), sad, after Keith's fucking death ?'Keith isn't here.





	

John stood there, in the middle of the grass, and listened.

It was quiet. So quiet. So very, painfully quiet. And it was never going to be any other way again. It was like yawning and the whistle of tinnitus leaving your ear – not that he was most qualified to talk about that. Except that was a relief.

This was agony.

“Are you here?” he asked, and the world stayed silent. Not a bird sang. Not a car revved. Not a single breath of wind blew. John closed his eyes. “Are you?”

He wasn’t. John was pretty sure.

“Why the fuck?” he asked bitterly – more to himself than any imagined half-presence. That question applied to a lot.

 _Why the fuck had it been Keith?_ Nobody, nobody on Earth had been fuller of life than him – it had spilled out of him. It _had._ Sure, he’d been getting worse, but… he hadn’t seen it.

_Why the fuck hadn’t he seen it?_

He closed his eyes. Wherever Keith was, it wasn’t here. What was here was a thousand million billion specks of dust made up of dead flesh burned beyond recognition, mixed up of what had been Keith and what had been someone’s mother and what had been someone’s son and what had been aunties, cousins, spinsters, lovers. Hell, one or two pets, too, he had some suspicion.

“Here, boy,” he said, and sniggered hollowly at his own unfunny joke.

 _Why the fuck was he even here?_ What was here for him? Was there not supposed to be closure? Was he not here to remember Keith as he had been? There was nothing alive here, and that was what Keith had been, unutterably and irrevocably _alive_ in every moment they had been together – a whirling dervish of sparks and laughter and crudity and wit, each kiss they had shared like a firework in the dark of his own personal calm, lucid night, each touch like a branded mark.

“Why?” he said, and to his chagrin he sounded disappointed. “Why would you leave?” He waited, and there was nothing. “I loved you. I _fucking_ loved you! Why wasn’t that enough!” His voice echoed from the nearby trees, but there was nobody here to scold him – alive or dead, and so he closed his eyes and scolded himself. “Why wasn’t I enough?”

_Why the fuck, indeed._

He closed his eyes.

“I loved you. I love you.” He sounded so weak, so bitter. He breathed in through his nose, and exhaled. “I fucking loved you, Keith.”

 _Bang_.

He jumped a mile, and turned around – a car had backfired in the street, fuck knows how far away, but it had sounded like a drumstick hitting God’s own snare, and he stared for a few seconds towards the street.

“You bastard,” he said, but his voice had a tone of wonderment and sadness to it. “You made me jump.”


End file.
